Tag: anorexia

Starving Artist

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Starving Artist by Valerie Parente

Eat your words and be compelled
to doubt the passion within myself
when you say I’m not a successful artist
because I haven’t made a profit
that I’m supposed to make money from my art
but I only spend money making art so far
struggling to make it accessible
striving to make it impressionable
but I guess I’m just a “starving artist”
scrambling for coins in empty pockets
how am I supposed to hide from depression and inaction
when I’m standing in the open begging for traction
and the “starving artist” in me starved before
the teenager with anorexia as her mentor
my talent used to be limiting my intake
now my talent is having something of value to say
so don’t you dare preach to me about starvation
when I already mastered the art of deliberate deprivation
if the world really insists on giving me this title
I’m going to be hellbent and entitled
when you use the label “starving artist” again
I’ll eat your words while rhyming them.

– Valerie Parente (9-28-2025)

The Damsel & The Demon OUT NOW

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The Damsel & The Demon by Valerie Parente

BUY HERE

The Damsel & The Demon is a poetry/fantasy story hybrid (verse novel) meant to be an allegory for the healing process, whether that be healing from addiction, a toxic relationship, a traumatic event, or anything in between. Valerie drew inspiration from her personal struggle with obsessive compulsive disorder and anorexia to create this Allegory for Healing through the lens of the main character, Daphne. For both Daphne and Valerie, fleeting feelings can only exist as fixations, and the rhythmic stanzas of an internal dialogue, playing like poetry, is the conduit between the mentally disordered author and the hexed protagonist of this story. There is so much beauty in healing, but healing is still ever so messy, uncovering darkness where we expected light and vice versa. Determined to create this massive poem with no help from search engines or AI, Valerie made it her mission to come up with every rhyme on her own; turning to the internet for help was forbidden. As a result, The Damsel & The Demon is an authentic fantastical dark fairytale scripture rich with revelations and an aim to help readers everywhere see themselves in the damsel archetype as well as the ailment they struggle to separate from in the demon.

Valerie Parente is a writer and artist from Massachusetts whose bodies of work often explore the theme, “Finding beauty in darkness” and general mental health awareness.

Trigger

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Trigger by Valerie Parente

How many people
roam around the world
trying not to be triggered
because the everyday man in the everyday trance
doesn’t understand
that the recovery phase
isn’t the same as unfazed.

It creeps up on you
these triggers
in the middle of a good day with a smile on your face
but you’re not okay
and the others don’t have a clue
that there’s a weapon inside of you
in the shape of a thought
waiting to be set off.

Therein lies the trickiness
of mental illness;
it’s invisible to everyone else
so we never know when we trigger it.

But there’s a beauty in you
that should be mentioned;
that you don’t go around the world
being unaffected.

Your triggers make you human
through and through
because what is a flawless mind
but a lesser version of me and you.

– Valerie Parente (6-22-2025)

Forbidden Fruit

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Forbidden Fruit by Valerie Parente

Temptation isn’t temptation
without a moral compass
and sin isn’t sin
without omniscient justice.
But who gets to say
what is and isn’t forbidden?
Who are you really spiting
with the apple you’ve bitten?
How can you say my nature is evil
if I was created in His image
then turn around and say He loves me
without any conditions?

I’ve deprived myself long enough
thanks to willful ignorance,
starved myself
thinking I would be different,
felt the bones of my ribcage
with blind commitment,
realized I lost half my life
to a sick and twisted vision,
then rose from the dead
with a whole new mission;
I will sink my teeth into fruit
regardless of permission.

– Valerie Parente (5-31-2025)

Mirror Mirror

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Mirror Mirror by Valerie Parente

Mirror mirror
on the wall
why do you lie
to girls so small
they turned to you
and asked what’s wrong
then you showed them themselves
and did them harm.
Don’t speak about fair
when innocence is involved
you are no bastion
of truth at all.

– Valerie Parente (5-26-2025)

Flood

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Flood by Valerie Parente

Numb
numb
numb
then like a flood
I felt it all
grief, guilt, but most of all
the feeling of being loved
and I could never be mad
at the way my loved ones loved me
when I was incapable
of feeling sorry
because they were the ones that cared
when I was too scared
and they cried
cried
cried
like a flood
in dry air.

I feel it all now
for all those times that I caused pain
and I just want my support system to know
the love was never in vain
the storm clouds are gone
but I am here, I remain
and I am more grateful
than a flower is to rain.

– Valerie Parente (5-9-2025)

Heart In My Throat

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Heart In My Throat by Valerie Parente

I had a distressing dream
that my heart was in my throat
and the voice inside of me
didn’t know how to flow.

I struggled to tell the elders
I could not survive like this
but they were just happy
that love in me still exists.

All of my love and heartache
at the same level I consume
the two were not the same
but my signals were askew.

A heart in the throat
is a very strange case
I could still feel it all
it just came from the wrong place.

It is not an easy way to live
and I had trouble vocalizing
how I would not survive
but I kept on surviving.

When I awoke, I remembered my youth
and how I thought I’d die instead of grow
but here I am, my adulthood so full of love
each day fulfilled beyond my wildest hopes.

I think it was young me all along
trying to communicate
“Thank you for believing I was wrong”
to the elder in me today.

– Valerie Parente (1-26-2025)

Hunger

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Hunger by Valerie Parente

I was never any good
at decoding my appetite,
was I really hungry
or was I empty inside?
Not in the pit of my stomach
but my heart and its hole,
looking for an object
for my affection to go.

I strive for permanence
but permanence scares me,
I’m afraid of full
but full is not finality,
there’s a fleeting hunger
that comes and goes,
and I am an example
of the flux and flow.

Ever since I met you
I feel the endless regimen,
the cycle of hunger
is a permanent impermanence,
a satisfaction then a longing
hungry, full, then hungry again,
and you remind me
that this makes me human.

I will always come back
now that I’ve had a taste
I finally understand my appetite
and the way it is paced.
I will always want you again
just not all at once
and I am no longer afraid
of a man’s permanence.

– Valerie Parente (1-19-2025)

Funhouse Reflex Hex

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Funhouse Reflex Hex by Valerie Parente

I have come up with a perfect spell
to keep my body dysmorphia in check,
a hex that allows me to see my mind as it is flawed
and my perception as how those flaws manifest.
First I look at someone I find beautiful
and all I see is skinny and perfect
then I imagine my face on the same exact body
and suddenly all I see is excess.
It is this brilliant trick
that takes me out of my own head,
it is this foolproof witchcraft
I call my Funhouse Reflex Hex
where I can finally separate my reality
from the mental virus
and I can see the flaws aren’t in my appearance,
they’re in the psychological defects.

– Valerie Parente (1-31-2024)